WHO CARES? by COSMO HAMILTON

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WHO CARES?

A STORY OF ADOLESCENCE

by COSMO HAMILTON

TO

MY YOUNG BROTHER

ARTHUR

WHO PLAYS THE GAME

"Another new novel?"

"Well,--another novel."

"What's it about?"

"A boy and a girl."

"A love story?"

"Well,-- it's about a boy and a girl."

"Do they marry?"

"I said it was about a boy and a girl."

"And are they happy?"

"Well,-- it's a love story."

"But all love stories aren't happy!"

"Yes they are,-- if it's love."

CONTENTS

PART ONE

SPRING IN THE WORLD

PART TWO

THE ROUND-ABOUT

PART THREE

THE GREAT EMOTION

PART FOUR

THE PAYMENT

I

SPRING IN THE WORLD AND ALL THINGS FOR THE YOUNG

Birds called. Breezes played among branches just bursting intogreen. Daffodils, proud and erect, stood in clumps about thedazzling lawn. Young, pulsing, eager things elbowed their waythrough last year's leaves to taste the morning sun; the wide-eyedcelandine, yellower than butter; the little violet, hugging theearth for fear of being seen; the sturdy bourgeois daisy; the pale-faced anemone, earliest to wake and earliest to sleep; the bluebird's-eye in small family groups; the blatant dandelion already ahead and shoulders taller than any neighbor. Every twig in the oldgarden bore its new load of buds that were soft as kittens' paws;and up the wrinkled trunks of ancient trees young ivy leaves chasedeach other like school-boys.

Spring had come again, and its eternal spirit spread the message ofnew-born hope, stirred the sap of awakening life, warmed the bosomof a wintry earth and put into the hearts of birds the old desire tomate. But the lonely girl turned a deaf ear to the call, and roundedher shoulders over the elderly desk with tears blistering herletter.

"I'm miserable, miserable," she wrote. "There doesn't seem to beanything to live for. I suppose it's selfish and horrid to grumblebecause Mother has married again, but why did she choose the verymoment when she was to take me into life? Oh, Alice, what am I todo? I feel like a rabbit with its foot in a trap, listening to thetraffic on the main road--like a newly fledged bird brought downwith a broken wing among the dead leaves of Rip Van Winkle'ssleeping-place. You'll laugh when you read this, and say that I'mdramatizing my feelings and writing for effect; but if you've gotany heart at all, you'd cry if you saw me (me of all girls!) buriedalive out here without a single soul to speak to who's as young as Iam--hushed if I laugh by mistake, scowled at if I let myself movequickly, catching old age every hour I stay here."

"Why, Alice, just think of it! There's not a person or a thing inand out of this house that's not old. I don't mean old as we thoughtof it at school, thirty and thirty-five, but really and awfully old.The house is the oldest for miles round. My grandfather is seventy-two, and my grandmother's seventy. The servants are old, the treesare old, the horses are old; and even the dogs lie about with dimeyes waiting for death."

"When Mother was here, it was bearable. We escaped as often as wecould, and rode and drove and made secret visits to the city and sawthe plays at matinees. There's nothing old about Mother. I supposethat's why she married again. But now that I'm left alone in thishouse of decay, where everybody and everything belongs to the past,I'm frightened of being so young, and catch looks that make me feelthat I ought to be ashamed of myself. It's so long since I quarreledwith a girl or flirted with a boy that I can't remember it. I'mforgetting how to laugh. I'm beginning not to care about clothes orwhether I look nice."

"One day is exactly like another. I wander about aimlessly withnothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to speak to. I've even begun togive up reading novels, because they make me so jealous. It's allwrong, Alice. It's bad and unhealthy. It puts mutinous thoughts intomy head. Honestly, the only way in which I can get the sort ofthrill that I ought to have now, if ever I am to thrill at all, isin making wild plans of escape, so wild and so naughty that I don'tthink I'd better write about them, even to you, dear."

"Mother's on her honeymoon. She went away a week ago in a state ofself-conscious happiness that left Grandfather and Grandmothersnappy and disagreeable. She will be away four months, and everyweekly letter that comes from her will make this place more and moreunbearable and me more restless and dangerous. I could get myselfinvited away. Enid would have me and give me a wonderful time. Shehas four brothers. Fanny has begged me to stay with her in Bostonfor the whole of the spring and see and do everything, which wouldbe absolutely heaven. And you know everybody in New York and couldmake life worth living."

"But Grandfather won't let me go. He likes to see me about thehouse, he says, and I read the papers to him morning and evening. Itdoes me good, he considers, to 'make a sacrifice and pay deferenceto those whose time is almost up.' So here I am, tied to theshadows, a prisoner till Mother comes back--a woman of eighteenforced to behave like a good little girl treated as if I were stillcontent to amuse myself with dolls and picture books! But the fireis smolderin Alice, and one fine day it will burst into flame."

A shaft of sunlight found its way through the branches of a chestnuttree and danced suddenly upon the envelope into which Joan hadsealed up this little portion of her overcharged vitality. Throughthe open windows of her more than ample room with its Colonial four-post bed, dignified tallboys, stiff chairs and anemic engravings ofearly-Victorianism, all the stir and murmur of the year's youth cameto Joan.

If her eyes had not been turned inward and her ears had not beentuned only to catch her own natural complaints, this chatter ofyoung things would have called her out to laugh and tingle and dancein the haunted wood and cry out little incoherent welcomes to thechildren of the earth. Something of the joy and emotion of thatmother-month must have stirred her imagination and set her bloodracing through her young body. She felt the call of youth and theurge to play. She sensed the magnetic pull of the voice of spring,but when, with her long brown lashes wet with impatient tears, shewent to the window and looked out at the green spread of lawn andthe yellow-headed daffodils, it seemed more than ever to her thatshe was peering through iron bars into the playground of a school towhich she didn't belong. She was Joan-all-alone, she told herself,and added, with that touch of picturesque phrasing inherited fromher well-read mother, that she was more like a racing motorboat tiedto a crumbling wharf in a deserted harbor than anything else in theworld.

There was a knock on her door and the sound of a bronchial cough."Come in," she said and darted an anxious look at the blond fat faceof the clock on the mantelshelf. She had forgotten all about thetime.

It was Gleave who opened the door, Gleave the bald-headed manservantwho had grown old along with his master with the same resentfulness--the ex-prizefighter, sailor, lumberman and adventurer who hadthrown in his lot with Cumberland Ludlow, the sportsman, when bothwere in the full flush of middle age. His limp, the result of anepoch-making fight in an Australian mining camp, was emphasized bysevere rheumatism, and the fretfulness of old age was heightened byhis shortness of breath.

He got no further than: "Your grandfather--"

"I know," said Joan. "I'm late again. And there'll be a row, Isuppose. Well, that will break the monotony, at any rate." Seizingthe moment when Gleave was wrestling with his cough, she slipped herletter into her desk, rubbed her face vigorously with herhandkerchief and made a dart at the door. Grandfather Ludlowdemanded strict punctuality and made the house shake if it failedhim. What he would have said if he could have seen this eager,brown-haired, vivid girl, built on the slim lines of a wood nymph,swing herself on to the banisters and slide the whole way down thewide stairway would have been fit only for theappreciative ears of his faithful man. As it was, Mrs. Nye, thehousekeeper, was passing through the hall, and her gasp at thisexhibition of unbecoming athletics was the least that could beexpected from one who still thought in the terms of the crinolineand had never recovered from the habit of regarding life through theearly-Victorian end of the telescope.

Joan slipped into Mr. Cumberland Ludlow's own room, shut the doorquickly and picked her way over the great skins that were scatteredabout the polished floor.

"Good morning, Grandfather," she said, and stood waiting for thestorm to break. She knew by heart the indignant remarks about thesloppiness of the younger generation, the dire results of modernanarchy and the universal disrespect that stamped the twentiethcentury, and set her quick mind to work to frame his openingsentence.

But the old man, whose sense of humor was as keen as ever, saw inthe girl's half-rebellious, half-deferential attitude an impatientexpectation of his usual irritation, and so he merely pointed ashaking finger at the clock. His silence was far more eloquent andeffective than his old-fashioned platitudes. He smiled as he saw hersurprise, indicated a chair and gave her the morning paper. "Goahead, my dear," he said.

Sitting bolt upright, with her back to the shaded light, hercharming profile with its little blunt nose and rounded chin thrownup against the dark glistening oak of an old armoire, Joan began toread. Her clear, high voice seemed to startle the dead beasts whoseheads hung thickly around the room and bring into their wide, fixedeyes a look of uneasiness.

Several logs were burning sulkily in the great open fireplace,throwing out a pungent, juicy smell. The aggressive tick of an oldand pompous clock endeavored to talk down the gay chatter of thebirds beyond the closed windows. The wheeze of a veteran Airedalewith its chin on the head of a lion came intermittently.

They made a picture, these two, that fitted with peculiar rightnessinto the mood of Nature at that moment. Youth was king, and with allhis followers had clambered over winter and seized the earth. Thered remainders of autumn were almost over-powered. Standing with hishands behind him and his back to the fire, the old sportsmanlistened, with a queer, distrait expression, to the girl's reading.That he was still putting up a hard fight against relentless Timewas proved by his clothes, which were those of a country-lover whodressed the part with care. A tweed shooting-coat hung from hisbroad, gaunt shoulders. Well-cut riding breeches, skin tight belowhis knees, ran into a pair of brown top-boots that shone like glass.A head and shoulders taller than the average tall man, his back wasbent and his chest hollow. His thin hair, white as cotton wool, wastouched with brilliantine, and his handsome face, deeply lined andwrinkled, was as closely shaved as an actor's after three o'clock.His sunken eyes, overshadowed by bushy brows, had lost their fire.He could no longer see to read. He too heard the call without, andwhen he looked at the young, sweet thing upon whom he was dependentfor the news, and glanced about the room so full of memories of hisown departed youth, he said to himself with more bitterness thanusual: "I'm old; I'm very old, and helpless; life has no use for me,and it's an infernal shame."

Joan read on patiently, glancing from time to time at the man whoseemed to her to be older than the hills, startlingly, terribly old,and stopped only when, having lowered himself into his arm-chair, heseemed to have fallen asleep. Then, as usual, she laid the paperaside, eager to be up and doing, but sat on, fearful of moving. Hergrandfather had a way of looking as though he would never wake upagain, and of being as ready as a tiger to pounce upon her if shetried to slip away. She would never forget some of the sarcasticthings he had said at these times, never! He seemed to take anunexplainable delight in making her feel that she had no right to beso young. He had never confided to her the tragedy of having a youngmind and an old body, young desires and winter in his blood. He hadnever opened the door in his fourth wall and let her see howbitterly he resented having been forced out of life and the greatchase, to creep like an old hound the ancient dogs among. He hadnever let her suspect that the tragedy of old age had hit him hard,filling his long hours with regret for what he might have done ordone better. Perhaps he was ashamed to confess these things thatwere so futile and so foolish. Perhaps he was afraid to earn a youngincredulous laugh at the pathetic picture of himself playing Canutewith the on-coming tide of years. He was not understood by thisgirl, because he had never allowed her to get a glimpse into hisheart; and so she failed to know that he insisted upon keeping herin his house, even to the point of extreme selfishness, because helived his youth over again in the constant sight of her. What a longand exquisite string of pearls there could be made of our unspokenwords!

The logs glowed red; the hard tick of the pompous clock marked offthe precious moments; and outside, spring had come. But Joan sat onwith mutinous thoughts, and the man who not so long ago had stalkedthe beasts whose heads and skins were silent reminders of hisstrength, lay back in his chair with nodding head.

"He's old," she said to herself, "dreadfully, awfully old, and he'spunishing me for being young. Oh! It's wicked, it's wicked. If onlyI had a father to spoil me and let me live! If only Mother hadn'tforgotten all about me in her own happiness! If only I had money ofmy own and could run away and join the throng!"

She heard a sigh that was almost a groan, turned quickly and saw twoslow tears running down her grandfather's face. He had been kickingagainst the pricks again and had hurt his foot.

With all the elaborate care of a Deerslayer, Joan got up, gave theboards that creaked a wide berth--she knew them all--and tiptoed tothe door. The fact that she, at eighteen years of age, a full-grownwoman in her own estimation, should be obliged to resort to suchmethods made her angry and humiliated. She was, however, rejoicingat one thing. Her grandfather had fallen asleep several pages of thepaper earlier than usual, and she was to be spared from the utterboredom of wading through the leading articles which dealt withsubways and Tammany and foreign politics and other matters for whichshe had a lofty contempt. She was never required to read the noticesof new plays and operas and the doings of society, which alone wereinteresting to her and made her mouth water.

Just as she had maneuvered her way across the wide, long room andwas within reach of the door, it opened and her grandmother hobbledin, leaning on her stick. There was a chuckle from the other end ofthe room. The blood flew to the girl's face. She knew withoutturning to look that the old man had been watching her carefulescape and was enjoying the sight of her, caught at the moment whenfreedom was at hand.

Mrs. Ludlow was one of those busy little women who are thorns in theflesh of servants. Her eyes had always been like those of aninspecting general. No detail, however small, went unnoticed andunrectified.

She had been called by an uncountable number of housemaids andfootmen "the little Madam"--the most sarcastic term of opprobriumcontained in their dictionary. A leader of New York society, she hadrun charitable institutions and new movements with the sameprecision and efficiency that she had used in her houses. Every hourof her day had been filled. Not one moment had been wasted orfrittered away. Her dinner parties had been famous, and she had hada spoke in the wheels of politics. Her witty sayings had been passedfrom mouth to mouth. Her little flirtations with prominent men andthe ambitious tyros who had been drawn to her salon had given riseto much gossip. Not by any means a beauty, her pretty face andtiptilted nose, her perennial cheerfulness, birdlike vivacity andgift of repartee had made her the center of attraction for years.

But she, like Cumberland Ludlow, had refused to grow old gracefullyand with resignation. She had put up an equally determined fightagainst age, and it was only when the remorseless calendar provedher to be sixty-five that she resigned from the struggle, washed thedye out of her hair and the make-up from her face and retired tothat old house. Not even then, however, did she resign from allactivity and remain contented to sit with her hands in her lap andprepare herself for the next world. This one still held a certainamount of joy, and she concentrated all the vitality that remainedwith her to the perfect running of her house. At eleven o'clockevery morning the tap of her stick on the polished floors was thesignal of her arrival, and if every man and woman of the menage wasnot actively at work, she knew the reason why. Her tongue was stillas sharp as the blade of a razor, and for sloppiness she had nomercy. Careless maids trembled before her tirades, and strong menshook in their shoes under her biting phrases. At seventy, with hersnowy hair, little face that had gone into as many lines as a driedpippin, bent, fragile body and tiny hands twisted by rheumatism, shelooked like one of the old women in a Grimm's fairy tale whofrightened children and scared animals and turned giants intocowards.

She drew up in front of the frustrated girl, stretched out her whitehand lined with blue veins and began to tap her on the shoulder--announcing in that irritating manner that she had a complaint tomake.

"My dear," she said, "when you write letters to your little friendsor your sentimental mother, bear in mind that the place for ink ison the note paper and not on the carpet."

"Yes, Grandmother."

"Try to remember also that if you put your hand behind a candle youcan blow it out without scattering hot grease on the wall paper."

"Yes, Grandmother"

"There is one other thing, if I may have your patience. You are notrequired to be a Columbus to discover that there is a basket forsoiled linen in your bedroom. It is a large one and eager to fulfillits function. The floor of your clothes closet is intended for yourshoes only. Will you be so good as to make a note of these things?"

"Yes, Grandmother."

Ink, candle grease, wash basket--what did they matter in the schemeof life, with spring tapping at the window? With a huge effort Joanforced back a wild burst of insurrection, and remained standing inwhat she hoped was the correct attitude of a properly repentantchild. "How long can I stand it?" she cried inwardly. "How longbefore I smash things and make a dash for freedom?"

"Now go back and finish reading to your grand father."

And once more, trembling with anger and mortification, the girlpicked her way over the limp and indifferent skins, took up thepaper and sat down. Once more her clear, fresh voice, this time witha little quiver in it, fitted in to the regular tick of thequerulous clock, the near-by chatter of birds' tongues and the hissof burning logs.

The prim old lady, who had in her time borne a wonderful resemblanceto the girl whom she watched so closely,--even to the chestnut-brownhair and the tip-tilted nose, the full lips, the round chin and thespirit that at any moment might urge her to break away fromdiscipline,--retired to carry on her daily tour of inspection; andthe old man stood again with his back to the fire to listenimpatiently and with a futile jealousy to the deeds and misdeeds ofan ever-young and ever-active world.

II

Joan was thankful when lunch was over, and murmured "Amen" to gracewith a fervor that would have surprised an unimaginative andunobservant person. Like all the meals in that pompous dining-room,it was a form of torture to a young thing bubbling with health andhigh spirits, who was not supposed to speak unless directlyaddressed and was obliged to hold herself in check while hergrandparents progressed slowly and deliberately through a menu ofmedically thought-out dishes. Both the old people were on a rigiddiet, and mostly the conversation between them consisted of grumblesat having to dally with baby-food and reminiscences of the admirabledinners of the past. An aged butler and a footman in the sere andyellow only added to the general Rip van Winklism, and the presenceof two very old dogs, one the grandfather's Airedale and the otherMrs. Ludlow's Irish terrier, with a white nose and rusty gray coat,did nothing to dispel the depression. The six full-length portraitsin oils that hung on the walls represented men and women whoseyears, if added together, would have made a staggering grand total.Even the furniture was Colonial.

But when Joan had put on her hat, sweater and a pair of thick-soledcountry boots, and having taken care to see that no one was about,slid down the banisters into the hall on her way out for her usuallonely walk, she slipped into the garden with a queer sense ofexcitement, an odd and unaccountable premonition that something wasgoing to happen. This queer thing had come to her in the middle oflunch and had made her heart suddenly begin to race. If she had beengiven to self analysis, which she was not, she might have toldherself that she had received a wireless message from some one aslonely as herself, who had sent out the S.O.S. call in the hope ofits being picked up and answered. As it was, it stirred her bloodand made her restless and intensely eager to get into the open, tofeel the sun and smell the sweetness in the air and listen to thecheery note of the birds.

It was with something of the excited interest which must havestirred Robinson Crusoe on seeing the foot-prints on the sand ofwhat he had conceived to be a desert island that she ran up thehill, through the awakened woods whose thick carpet of brown leaveswas alight with the green heads of young ferns, and out to theclearing from which she had so often gazed wist fully in thedirection of the great city away in the distance.

She was surprised to find that she was alone as usual, bitterlydisappointed to see no other sign of life than her friends therabbits and the squirrels--the latter of which ambled toward her inthe expectation of peanuts. She had no sort of concrete idea of whatshe had expected to find: nor had she any kind of explanation of thewave of sympathy that had come to her as clearly as though it hadbeen sent over an electric wire. All she knew was that she was outof breath for no apparent reason, and on the verge of tears atseeing no one there to meet her. Once before, on her sixth birthday, the same call had been sent to her when she was playing alonewith her dolls in the semitropical garden of a hired house inFlorida, and she had started up and toddled round to the front andfound a large-eyed little girl peering through the gate. It was thebeginning of a close and blessed friendship.

This time, it seemed, the call had been meant for some other lonelysoul, and so she stood and looked with blurred eyes over the widevalley that lay unrolled at her feet and, asked herself what she hadever done to deserve to be left out of all the joy of life. Fromsomewhere near by the baying of hounds came, and from a farm to herleft the crowing of a cock; and then a twig snapped behind her, andshe turned eagerly.

"Oh, hello," said the boy.

"Oh, hello," she said.

He was not the hero of her dreams, by a long way. His hair didn'tcurl; his nose was not particularly straight; nor were his eyeslarge and magnetic. He was not something over six feet two; nor washe dressed in wonderful clothes into which he might have been pouredin liquid form. He was a cheery, square-shouldered, good-naturedlooking fellow with laughter in his gray eyes and a little quizzicalsmile playing round a good firm mouth. He looked like a man whoought to have been in the navy and who, instead, gave the impressionof having been born among horses. His small, dark head was bare; hisskin had already caught the sun, and as he stood in his brownsweater with his hands thrust into the pockets of his ridingbreeches, he seemed to her to be just exactly like the brother thatshe ought to have had if she had had any luck at all, and she heldout a friendly hand with a comfortable feeling of absolute security.

With some self-consciousness he took it and bowed with a nice touchof deference. He tried to hide the catch in his breath and theadmiration in his eyes. "I'm glad it's spring," he said, not knowingquite what he was saying.

"So am I," said Joan. "Just look at those violets and the way theleaves are bursting."

"I know. Great, isn't it? Are you going anywhere?"

"No. I've nowhere to go."

"Same here. Let's go together."

And they both laughed, and the squirrel that had come to meet Joandarted off with a sour look. He had anticipated a fat meal ofpeanuts. He was out of it now, he saw, and muttered whatever was thesquirrel equivalent for a swear-word.

The boy and girl took the path that ran round the outskirts of thewood, swung into step and chimed into the cantata of spring withtalk and laughter.

There had been rather a long silence.

Joan was sitting with her back against the trunk of a fallen tree,with her hands clasped round her knees. She had tossed her hataside, and the sunlight made her thick brown hair gleam like copper.They had come out at another aerie on the hill, from which a greatstretch of open country could be seen. Her eyes were turned as usualin the direction of New York, but there was an expression ofcontentment in them that would have startled all the old people andthings at home.

Martin Gray was lying full stretch on the turf with his elbows upand his chin on his left fist. He had eyes for nothing but the vividgirl whom he had found so unexpectedly and who was the most alivething that he had ever seen.

During this walk their chatter had been of everything under the sunexcept themselves. Both were so frankly and unaffectedly glad to beable to talk at all that they broke into each other's laughing andchildish comments on obvious things and forgot themselves in thepleasure of meeting. But now the time had come for mutualconfidences, and both, in the inevitable young way, felt the desireto paint the picture of their own particular grievance against lifewhich should make them out to be the two genuine martyrs of thecentury. It was now a question of which of them got the first look-in. The silence was deliberate and came out of the fine sense ofsportsmanship that belonged to each. Although bursting to pour outher troubles, Joan wanted to be fair and give Martin the first turn,and Martin, equally keen to prove himself the champion of badlytreated men, held himself in, in order that Joan, being a woman,should step into the limelight. It was, of course, the male memberof the duet who began. A man's ego is naturally more aggressive thana woman's.

"Do you know," said Martin, arranging himself in a more comfortableattitude, "that it's over two months since I spoke to any one ofabout my own age?"

Joan settled herself to listen. With the uncanny intuition thatmakes women so disconcerting, she realized that she had missed herchance and must let the boy have his head.

Not until he had unburdened his soul would she be able, she knew, tofocus his complete attention upon herself.

"Tell me about it," she said.

He gave her a grateful look. "You know the house with the kennelsover there--the hounds don't let you miss it. I've been wanderingabout the place without seeing anybody since Father died."

"Oh, then, you're Martin Gray!"

"Yes."

"I was awfully sorry about your father."

"Thanks." The boy's mouth trembled a little, and he worked his thumbinto the soft earth. "He was one of the very best, and it was notright. He was too young and too much missed. I don't understand it.He had twenty-five years to his credit, and I wanted to show himwhat I was going to do. It's all a puzzle to me. There's somethingfrightfully wrong about it all, and it's been worrying me awfully."

Joan couldn't find anything to say. Years before, when she was fouryears old, Death had come to her house and taken her own fatheraway, and she had a dim remembrance of dark rooms and of her mothercrying as though she had been very badly hurt. It was a vague figurenow, and the boy's queer way of talking about it so personally madethe conventional expressions that she had heard seem out of place.It was the little shake in his voice that touched her.

"He had just bought a couple of new hunters and was going to run thehunt this fall. I wanted him to live forever. He died in New York,and I came here to try and get used to being without him. I thoughtI should stay all alone for the rest of my life, but--this morningwhen I was moping about, everything looked so young and busy that Igot a sort of longing to be young and busy again myself. I don'tknow how to explain it, but everything shouted at me to get up andshake myself together, and on the almanac in Father's room I read athing that seemed to be a sort of message from him."

"Did you? What was it?"

"'We count it death to falter, not to die.' It was under to-day'sdate, and it was the first thing I saw when I went to the desk whereFather used to sit, and it was his voice that read it to me. It wasvery wonderful and queer. It sort of made me ashamed of the way Iwas taking it, and I went out to begin again,--that's how it seemedto me,--and I woke everybody up and set things going and saw thatthe horses were all right, and then I climbed over the wall, and asI walked away, out again for the first time after all those badweeks, I wanted to find some one young to talk to. I don't know howit was, but I went straight up the hill and wasn't a bit surprisedwhen I saw you standing there."

"That's funny," said Joan.

"Funny--how?"

"I don't know. But if you hadn't found me after the feeling thatcame to me at lunch--"

"Well?"

"Well, I'm sure I should have turned bitter and never believed anymore in fairies and all that. I don't think I mean fairies, and Ican't explain what 'all that' stands for, but I know I should havebeen warped if I hadn't turned round and seen you."

And she laughed and set him laughing, and the reason of their havingmet was waved aside. The fact remained that there they were--youthwith youth, and that was good enough.

III

There was a touch of idealism hidden away somewhere in Martin'scharacter. A more than usually keen-eyed boy had once called him"the poet" at school. In order that this dubious nickname should bestrangled at birth, there had been an epoch-making fight. Both ladscame out of it in a more or less unrecognizable condition, butMartin reestablished his reputation and presently entered Yale freefrom the suspicion of being anything but a first-rate sportsman andan indisputable man.

There Martin had played football with all the desired bullishness.He had hammered ragtime on the piano like the best ordinary man inthe University. With his father he rode to hounds hell for leather,and he wrote comic stuff in a Yale magazine which made himadmiringly regarded as a sort of junior George Ade. It was only insecret, and then with a sneaking sense of shame, that he allowed hisidealistic side to feed on Browning and Ruskin, Maeterlinck andBarrie, and only when alone on vacation that he bathed in the beautyof French cathedrals, sat thrilled and stirred by the waves ofmelody of the great composers, drew up curiously touched and awed atthe sight of the places in the famous cities of Europe that echoedwith the footsteps of history.

If the ideality of that boy had been seized upon and developed by asympathetic hand, if his lively imagination and passion for thebeautiful had been put through a proper educational course, he mighthave used the latent creative power with which nature had endowedhim and taken a high place among artists, writers or composers. Asit was, his machinelike, matter-of-fact training and his own self-conscious anxiety not to be different from the average goodsportsman had made him conform admirably to type. He was a finespecimen of the eager, naive, quick-witted, clean-minded youngAmerican, free from "side," devoid of mannerisms, determined to makethe utmost of life and its possibilities.

It is true that when death seized upon the man who was brother andpal as well as father to Martin, all the stucco beneath which he hadso carefully hidden his spiritual and imaginative side cracked andbroke. Under the indescribable shock of what seemed to him to bewanton and meaningless cruelty, the boy gave way to a grief that wasangry and agonized by turns. He had left a fit, high-spirited fatherto drive to a golf shop to buy a new mashie, returned to take himout to Sleepy Hollow for a couple of rounds--and found him stretchedout on the floor of the library, dead. Was it any wonder that hetortured himself with unanswerable questions, sat for hours in thedark trying with the most pitiful futility to fathom the riddle oflife, or that he wandered aimlessly about the place, which wasstamped with his father's fine and kindly personality,--like a sticksuddenly swept out of the current of the main stream into a tidelessbackwater, untouched by the sun? And when finally, still deaf to thecall of spring, his father's message of courage, "We count it deathto falter, not to die," rang out and straightened him up and set himon the rails of action once again, it was not quite the same MartinGray who uttered the silent cry for companionship that found ananswer in Joan's lonely and rebellious heart. Sorrow hadstrengthened him. Out of the silent manliness of grief he went outagain on the great main road with a wistful desire to love and beloved, to find some one with whom to link an arm in an empty worldall crowded with strangers--and there stood Joan.

It was natural that he should believe, under those circumstances,that he and she did not meet by mere accident, that they had beenbrought together by design--all the more natural when he listened toher story of mental and physical imprisonment and came to see,during their daily stolen meetings, that he was as necessary to heras she was to him. Every time he left her and watched her run backto that old house of old people, it was borne in upon him moredefinitely that he was appointed in the cosmic scheme to rescue Joanfrom her peculiar cage and help her to try her wings. All about thatyoung fresh, eager creature whose eyes were always turned soardently toward the city, his imagination and superstition built abower of love.

He had never met a girl in any way like her--one who wanted so muchand would give so little in return for it, who had an eel-like wayof dodging hard-and-fast facts and who had made up her mind with allthe zest and thoughtlessness of youth to mold life, when finally shecould prove how much alive she was, into no other shape than the onewhich most appealed to her. She surprised and delighted him with herquick mental turns and twists, and although she sometimes made himcatch his breath at her astoundingly frank expression ofindividualism, he told himself that she was still in the chrysalisstage and could only get a true and normal hang of things afterrubbing shoulders with what she called life with a capital L.

Two weeks slipped away more quickly than these two young things hadever known them to go, and the daily meetings, utterly guileless andfree from flirtation, were the best part of the day; but there was anew note in Joan's laugh as she swung out of the wood and wenttoward Martin one afternoon.

He caught it and looked anxiously at her. "Is anything wrong?"

"There will be," she said. "I just caught sight of Gleave among thetrees. He was spying!"

"Why do you think so?"

"Oh, he never walks a yard unless he has to. I thought I saw himeying me rather queerly at lunch. I've been looking happy lately,and that's made him suspicious."

"But what can he do?"

"What can't he do! Grandmother's one of the old-fashioned sort whothinks that a girl must never speak to a man without a chaperon.They must have been a lively lot of young women in her time! Gleavewill tell her that I've been coming here to meet you, and thenthere'll be a pretty considerable row."

Martin was incredulous. He was in America in the twentieth century.Young people did as they liked, and parents hardly ventured toremonstrate. He showed his teeth in the silent laugh that wascharacteristic of him. "Oh, no! I'll be all right. Your grandfatherknew my father."

"That won't make any difference. I believe that in a sort of wayhe's jealous of my having a good time. Queer, isn't it? Are all oldpeople like that? And as to Grandmother, this will give her one ofthe finest chances to let herself go that she's had since I set acurtain on fire with a candle; and when she does that, well, thingsfly, I assure you."

"Are you worried about it?"

Joan gave a gesture of the most eloquent impatience. "I have to be,"she said. "You can't understand it, but I'm treated just as if Iwere a little girl in short frocks. It's simply appalling.Everything I say and do and look is criticized from the point ofview of 1850. Can't you imagine what will be thought of my sneakingout every afternoon to talk to a dangerous young man who has onlyjust left Yale and lives among horses?"

That was too much for Martin. His laugh echoed among the trees.

But Joan didn't make it a duet. "It wouldn't be so funny to you ifyou stood in my shoes, Martin," she said. "If I had gone toGrandmother and asked her if I might meet you,--and just think of myhaving to do that,--she would have been utterly scandalized. Now,having done this perfectly dreadful thing without permission, Ishall be hauled up on two charges,--deceit and unbecoming behavior,--and I shall be punished."

The boy wheeled around in amazement. "You don't mean that?"

"Of course I mean it. Haven't I told you over and over again thatthese two dear but irritating old people look down at me from theirawful pile of years and only see me as a child?"

"But what will they do to you?"

Joan shrugged her shoulders. "Anything they like. I'm completely attheir mercy. For Mother's sake I try to be patient and put up withit all. It's the only home I've got, and when you're dependent andhaven't a cent to bless yourself with, you can't pack up andtelephone for a cab and get out, can you? But it can't go onforever. Some day I shall answer back, and sparks will fly, and Ishall borrow money from the coachman, who's my only friend, and goto Alice Palgrave and ask her to put me up until Mother comes back.I'm a queer case, Martin--that's the truth of it. In a book theother day I came across an exact description of myself. I could havelaughed if it hadn't hit me so hard. It said: 'She was a super-modern in an early-Victorian frame, a pint of champagne in a littleold cut-glass bottle, a gnome engine attached to a coach and pair.'"She picked up a stone and flung it down the hill.

One eager wild thought rushed through Martin's brain. It had madehis blood race several times before, but he had thrown it asidebecause, during all their talks and walks, Joan had never oncelooked at him with anything but the eyes of a sister. As his wife hecould free her, lift her out of her anomalous atmosphere and takeher to the city to which her face was always turned. But he lackedthe courage to speak and continued to hope that some day, by somemiracle, she might become less superlatively neutral, less almostboyish in her way of treating him. He threw it aside again, temptedas he was to take advantage of a chance to bribe her into becominghis wife with an offer of life. Then too, she was only eighteen, andalthough he was twenty-four and in the habit of thinking of himselfas a man of ripe years, he had to confess that the mere idea ofmarriage made him feel awfully young and scared. And so he saidnothing and went on hoping.

Joan broke the silence. "Everything will be different when Mothercomes back," she said. "I shall live with her then, and I give youmy word I'll make up for lost time. So who cares? There are threegood hours before I face Grandmother. Let's enjoy ourselves."

IV

Martin couldn't settle down after his solitary dinner that night.Several times he had jumped out of his father's reading chair andstood listening at the window. It seemed to him that some one hadcalled his name. But the only sounds that broke the exquisitequietude of the night were the distant barking of a dog, the whirlof an automobile on the road or the pompous crowing of a master of abarnyard, taken up and answered by others near and far.

Each time the boy had stood at the open window and peered outeagerly and wistfully, but nothing had moved across the moon-bathedlawn or disturbed the sleeping flowers. Under the cold light of thestars the earth appeared to be more than usually peaceful anddrowsy. All was well.

But the boy's blood tingled, and he was filled with an unexplainablesense of excitement. Some one needed him, and he wanted urgently tobe needed. He turned from the window and ran his eyes over the long,wide, low-ceilinged masculine room, every single thing in whichspelled Father to him; then he went back to the chair the right tosit in which had been given to him by death, persuaded that over theunseen wires that stretch from heart to heart a signal had beensent, certain that he was to hold himself in readiness to dosomething for Joan.

He had written out the words, "We count it death to falter, not todie" on a long strip of card in big bold letters. They faced him ashe sat and read over and over again what he regarded as his father'smessage. It was a call to service, an inspiration to activity, andit had already filled him with the determination to fall into stepwith the movement of the world, to put the money of which he was nowthe most reluctant owner to some use as soon as the necessary legalsteps of proving his father's Will had been taken. He had made uphis mind to leave the countryside at the end of the week and meethis father's lawyers and take advice as to how he could hitchhimself to some vigorous and operative pursuit. He was going, pleaseGod, to build up a workmanlike monument to the memory of his father.

Ten o'clock struck, and uninterested in his book, he would have goneto bed but for the growing feeling that he was not his own master,that he might be required at any moment. The feeling became sostrong that finally he got up and went into the hall. He couldn'twait any longer. He must go out, slip into the garden of the Ludlowhouse and search the windows for a sight of Joan.

He unbolted the front door, gave a little gasp and found himselfface to face with the girl who was in his thoughts.

There was a ripple of excited laughter; a bag was thrust into hishand, and like a bird escaped from a cage, Joan darted past him intothe hall.

"I've done it," she cried, "I've done it!" And she broke into adance.

Martin shut the door, put the bulging suit-case on a chair andwatched the girl as she whirled about the hall, as graceful as awater sprite, with eyes alight with mischief and animation. Thesight of her was so bewitching, the fact that she had come to himfor help so good, that his curiosity to know what it was that shehad done fell away.

Suddenly she came to a breathless stop and caught hold of his arm."Bolt the door, Marty," she said, "quickly, quickly! They may sendafter me when they find I've got away. I'll never go back, never,never!"

All the spirit of romance in the boy's nature flamed. This was agreat adventure. He had become a knight errant, the rescuer of adamsel in distress. He shot the bolts back, turned out the lights,took Joan's hand and led her into his father's room.

"Turn these lights out too," she said. "Make it look as if everybodyhad gone to bed."

He did so, with a sort of solemn sense of responsibility; and it wasin a room lighted only by a shaft of pale moonlight that fell in apool upon the polished floor that these two utterly inexperiencedchildren sat knee to knee, the one to pour out her story, the otherto listen and hold his breath.

"I was right about Gleave. He was spying. It turns out that he'sbeen watching us for two or three days. When I went back thisafternoon, I got a look from Mrs. Nye that told me there was a rowin the air. I was later than usual and rushed up to my room tochange for dinner. The whole house seemed awfully quiet and ominous,like the air before a thunderstorm. I expected to be sent for atonce to stand like a criminal before Grandfather and Grandmother--but nothing happened. All through dinner, while Gleave totteredabout, they sat facing each other at the long table, conducting,--that's the only word to describe it,--a polite conversation. Neitherof them took any notice of me or even once looked my way. EvenGleave put things in front of me as though he didn't see me, andwhen I caught the watery eyes of the old dogs, they both seemed tomake faces and go 'Yah!'"

"It was weird, and would have been frightfully funny if I hadn'tknown that sooner or later I should have to stand up and take mydose. Phew, it was a ghastly meal. I'm certain I shall dream it allover again every time I eat something that doesn't agree with me! Itwas a great relief when at last Grandmother turned at the door andlooking at my feet as though they were curiosities, said: 'Joan, youwill follow us to the drawing-room.' Her voice was cold enough tofreeze the sea."

"Then she went out, her stick rapping the floor, Grandfather afterher with his shoulders bent and a piece of bread on the back of hisdinner jacket. The two dogs followed, and I made up the tail of thatqueer procession. I hate that stiff, cheerless drawing room anyhow,with all its shiny cases of china and a collection of all theuncomfortable chairs ever designed since Adam. I wanted to laugh andcry, and when I saw myself in the glass, I couldn't believe that Iwasn't a little shivering girl with a ribbon in my hair and whitesocks."

Some one whistled outside. The girl seized the boy's arm in a suddenpanic of fright.

"It's all right," he said." It's only the gardener going to hiscottage."

Joan laughed, and her grip relaxed. "I'm jumpy," she said. "Mynerves are all over the place. Do you wonder?"

"No, tell me the rest."

Joan's voice took on a little deeper note like that of a child whohas come to the really creepy bit of his story. "Marty," she wenton, "I wish you could have heard the way in which Grandmother letherself go! She held me by the scruff of my neck and hit me rightand left with the sort of sarcasm that made me crinkle. According toher, I was on the downward path. I had done something quite hopelessand unforgivable. She didn't know how she could bring herself toreport the affair--think of calling it an affair, Marty!--to my poormother. Mother, who'd never say a word to me, whatever I did! Shemight have out-of-date views, she said, of how young girls shouldbehave, but they were the right views, and so long as I was underher roof and in her care, she would see that I conformed to them.She went on making a mountain out of our little molehill, till evenGrandfather broke in with a word; and then she snapped at him, gotinto her second wind and went off again. "I didn't listen half thetime. I just stood and watched her as you'd watch one of those weirdold women in one of Dickens' books come to life. What I remember ofit all is that I am deceitful and fast, ungrateful, irresponsible,with no sense of decency, and when at last she pronounced sentence,what do you think it was? Confinement to the house for a week and ifafter that, I ever meet you again, to be packed off to a finishing-school in Massachusetts. She rapped her stick on the floor by way ofa full stop, and waved her hand toward the door. I never said aword, not a single one. What was the use? I gave her a little bowand went. Just as I was going to rush upstairs and think over what Icould do, Grandfather came out and told me to go to his room to readsomething to him. And there, for the first time, he let me see whata fine old fellow he really is. He agreed with Grandmother that Iought not to have met you on the sly. It was dangerous, he said,though perfectly natural. He was afraid I found it very trying tolive among a lot of old grouches with their best feet in the grave,but he begged me to put up with it because he would miss me so. Heliked having me about, not only to read to him but to look at. Ireminded him of Grandmother when she was young, and life was worthliving.

"I cried then. I couldn't help it--more for his sake than mine. Hespoke with such a funny sort of sadness. 'Be patient, my dear,' hesaid. 'Treat us both with a little kindness. You're top dog. Youhave all your life before you. Make allowances for two old peopleentering second childhood. You'll be old some day, you know.' And hesaid this with such a twisted sort of smile that I felt awfullysorry for him, and he saw it and opened out and told me howappalling it was to become feeble when the heart is as young asever. I had no idea he felt like that."

"When I left him I tried hard to be as patient as he asked me to beand wait till Mother comes back and make the allowances he spokeabout and give up seeing you and all that. But when I got up to myroom with the echo of Grandmother's rasping voice in my ears, thethought of being shut up in the house for a week and treated like alunatic was too much for me. What had I done that every otherhealthy girl doesn't do every day without a question? How COULD I goon living there, watched and suspected? How could I put up anylonger with the tyranny of an old lady who made me feel artificialand foolish and humiliated--a kind of doll stuffed with saw dust?

"Marty, I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't. Something went snap,and I just flung a few things into a suit-case, dropped it out thewindow, climbed down the creeper and made a dash for freedom.Nothing on earth will ever take me back to that house again,nothing, nothing!"

All this had been said with a mixture of humor and emotion thatcarried the boy before it. He saw and heard everything as shedescribed it. His own relations with his father, which had been sofree and friendly, made Joan's with those two old people seemfantastic and impossible. All his sympathy went out to her. To helpher to get away appealed to him as being as humane as releasing asquirrel from a trap. No thought of the fact that she was a girl whohad rushed impulsively into a most awkward position struck him. Intohis healthy mind no sex question thrust itself. She was his friend,and as such, her claim upon him was overwhelming and unarguable.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Have you thought ofanything?"

"Of course I have. In the morning, early, before they find out thatI've bolted, you must drive me to New York and take me to AlicePalgrave. She'll put me up, and I can telegraph to Mother for moneyto buy clothes with. Does it occur to you, Marty, that you're thecause of all this? If I hadn't turned and found you that afternoon,I should still be eating my soul away and having my young lifecrushed. As it is, you've forced my hand. So you're going to take meto the magic city, and if you want to see how a country cousin makesup for lost time and sets things humming, watch me!"

So they talked and talked, sitting in that room which was made thevery sanctum of romance by young blood and moonlight. Eleven o'clockslipped by, and twelve and one; and while the earth slept, watchedby a million glistening eyes, and nature moved imperceptibly onestep nearer to maturity, this boy and girl made plans for thediscovery of a world out of which so many similar explorers havecrept with wounds and bitterness.

They were wonderful and memorable hours, not ever to be lived again.They were the hours that all youth enjoys and delights in once--when, like gold-diggers arrived in sight of El Dorado, they halt andpeer at the chimera that lies at their feet--

"I'm going to make my mark," Martin said. "I'm going to makesomething that will last. My father's name was Martin Gray, and I'llmake it MEAN some thing out there for his sake."

"And I," said Joan, springing to her feet and throwing up her chin,"will go joy-riding in the huge round-about. I've seen what it is tobe old and useless, and so I shall make the most of every day andhour while I'm young. I can live only once, and so I shall make lifespin whatever way I want it to go. If I can get anybody to pay mywhack, good. If not, I'll pay it myself--whatever it costs. Mymotto's going to be a good time as long as I can get it, and whocares for the price?"

The boy followed her to the window, and the moonlight fell upon themboth. "Yes," he said, "you'll get a bill, all right. How did youknow that?"

"I haven't lived with all those old people so long for nothing," sheanswered. "But you won't catch me grumbling if I get half as much asI'm going out for. Listen to my creed, Martin, and take notes, ifyou want to keep up with me."

"Go ahead," he said, watching the sparkle in her eyes.

She squared her shoulders and folded her arms in a half-defiant way."I shall open the door of every known Blue Room--hurrying out againif there are ugly things inside, staying to enjoy them if they'regood to look at. I shall taste a little of every known bottle, feeleverything there is to feel except the thing that hurts, laugh withany one whose laugh is catching, do everything there is to do, gointo every booth in the big Bazaar; and when I'm tired out andthere's nothing left, I shall slip out of the endless processionwith a thousand things stored away in my memory. Isn't that the wayto live?"

From the superior height of twenty-four, Martin looked down on Joanindulgently. He didn't take her frank and unblushing individualismseriously. She was just a kid, he told himself. She was a girl whohad been caged up and held in. It was natural for her to say allthose wild things. She would alter her point of view as soon as thefirst surprise of being free had worn off--and then he would speak;then he would ask her to throw in her lot with his and walk in stepwith him along the street of adventure.

"I sha'n't see the sun rise on this great day," she said, letting ayawn have full play. "I'm sleepy, Marty. I must lie down this veryinstant, even if the floor's the only place you can offer me. Quick!What else is there?" Before he could answer, she had caught sight ofa low, long, enticing divan, and onto this, with a gurgle ofpleasure, she made a dive, placed two cushions for her head, put onelittle hand under her face, snuggled into an attitude of perfectcomfort and deliberately went to sleep. It was masterly.

Martin, not believing that she could turn off so suddenly at acomplete tangent, spoke to her once or twice but got no other answerthan a long, contented sigh. He stood for a little while trying tomake out her outline in the dim corner of the room. Then he tiptoedout to the hall, possessed himself of a warm motor-rug, returnedwith it and laid it gently and tenderly over the unconscious girl.

He didn't intend to let sleep rob him of the first sight of a daythat was to mean so much to him, and he went over to the openwindow, caught the scent of lilac and listened, with all hisimagination and sense of beauty stirred, to the deep breathing ofthe night. . ..Yes, he had cut through the bars which had kept thisgirl from taking her place among the crowd. He was responsible forthe fact that she was about to play her part in the comedy of life.He was glad to be responsible. He had passionately desired a causeto which to attach hirmelf; and was there, in all the world, abetter than Joan?

Spring had come again, and all things were young, and the call tomate rang in his ears and set his heart beating and his thoughtsracing ahead. He loved her, this girl that he had come upon standingout in all her freshness against a blue sky. He would serve her asthe great lovers had served, and please God, she would some dayreturn his love. They would build up a home and bring up a familyand go together up the inevitable hill.

And as he stood sentinel, in a waking dream, waiting for the fingerof dawn to rub the night away, sleep tapped him on the shoulder, andhe turned and went to the divan and sat down with his back to it,touched one of Joan's placid hands with his lips and drifted intofurther dreams with a smile around his mouth.

V

It was ten o'clock in the morning when Martin brought his car to astop and looked up at the heavy Gothic decorations of a pompoushouse in East Fifty-fifth Street. "Is this it?"

"Yes," said Joan, getting out of the leather-lined coat that he hadwrapped her in. "It really is a house, isn't it; and luckily, allthe gargoyles are on the outside." She held out her hand and gaveMartin the sort of smile for which any genuine man would sell hissoul. "Marty," she added, "you've been far more than a brother tome. You've been a cousin. I shall never be able to thank you. And Iadored the drive with our noses turned to the city. I shan't be ableto be seen on the streets until I've got some frocks, so please comeand see me every day. As soon as Alice has got over her shock at thesight of me, I'm going to compose an historical letter toGrandmother."

"Let her down lightly," said Martin, climbing out with the suit-case. "You've won."

"Yes, that's true; but I shouldn't be a woman if I didn't get in thelast word."

"You're not a woman," said Martin. "You're a kid, and you're in NewYork, and you're light-headed; so look out."

Joan laughed at his sudden gravity and ran up the wide steps and puther finger on the bell. "I've written down your telephone number,"she said, "and memorized your address. I'll call you up at threeo'clock this afternoon, and if you've nothing else to do, you maytake me for a walk in the Park."

"I sha'n't have anything else to do."

The door was opened. The footman was obviously English, with the artof footmanism in his blood.

"Quite sure, miss. Mrs. Palgrave left for Boston yesterday onaccount of hillness in the family, miss."

There was an awkward and appalled silence. Little did the mansuspect the kind of blow that his statement contained.

Joan darted an agonized look at Martin.

"But Mr. Palgrave is at 'ome, miss."

And that galvanized the boy into action. He had met Gilbert Palgraveout hunting. He had seen the impertinent, cocksure way in which heran his eyes over women. He clutched the handle of the case andsaid: "That's all right, thanks. Miss Ludlow will write to Mrs.Palgrave." Then he turned and went down the steps to the car.

Trying to look unconcerned, Joan followed.

"Get in, quick," said Martin. "We'll talk as we go."

"But why? If I don't stay here, where am I to stay?"

"I don't know. Please get in."

Joan stood firm. The color had come back to her face, and a look ofsomething like anger had taken the place of fright. "I didn't tellyou to march off like that. Gilbert's here."

"That's why we're going," Said Martin.

"I don't understand." Her eyes were blazing.

"I know you don't. You can't stay in that house. It isn't done."

"I can do it, and I must do it. Do you suppose I'm going back withmy tail between my legs?"

"If we argue here, we shall collect a crowd." He got into the carand held out his hand.

Joan ignored it but followed him in. She was angry, puzzled,disappointed, nonplussed. Alice had no right to be away on such anoccasion. Everything had looked so easy and smooth-sailing. EvenMartin had changed into a different man, and was ordering her about.If he thought he could drive her back to that prison again, he wasconsiderably wrong. She would never go back, never.

The car was running slowly. "Have you any other friends in town?"asked Martin, who seemed to be trying to hide an odd kind ofexcitement.

"No," said Joan. "Alice is my only friend here. Drive to some placewhere I can call up Gilbert Palgrave and explain the whole thing.What does it matter about my being alone? If I don't mind, whoshould? Please do as I say. There's no other place for me to go to,and wild horses sha'n't drag me back."

"You sha'n't go back," said Martin. He turned the car up MadisonAvenue and drove without another word to East Sixty-seventh Streetand stopped in front of a small house that was sandwiched between amansion and a twelve-story apartment-house. "This is mine," he saidsimply. "Will you come in?"

A smile of huge relief came into Joan's eyes. "Why worry?" she said."How foolish of us not to have thought of this before!"

But there was no smile on Martin's face. His eyes were amazinglybright and his mouth set firmly. His chin looked squarer than ever.Once more he carried out the suit-case, put a latchkey into the lockand threw back the door. Joan went in and stood looking about thecheery hall with its old oak, and sporting prints, white wood andred carpet. "Oh, but this is perfectly charming, Marty," she criedout. "Why did we bother our heads about Alice when there is thishaven of refuge?"

Martin marched up to her and stood eye to eye. "Because I'm alone,"he said, "and you're a girl. That's why."

Joan made a face. "I see. The conventions again. Isn't there anysort of woman here?"

"Yes, the cook."

She laughed. There was a comic side to this tragedy, after all, itseemed. "Well, perhaps she'll give us some scrambled eggs andcoffee. I could eat a horse."

Martin opened the door of the sitting room. Like the one in whichshe had slept so soundly the previous night, it was stamped with thecharacter and personality of the other Martin Gray. Books, warm andfriendly, lined the walls. Mounted on wood, fish of different sizesand breeds hung above the cases, and over the fireplace there was afull-length oil painting of a man in a red coat and riding breeches.His kind eyes greeted Joan.

For several minutes she stood beneath it, smiling back. Then sheturned and put her hand involuntarily on the boy's shoulder. "Oh,Marty!" she said. "I AM sorry."

The boy gave one quick upward glance, and cleared his throat. "Itold you that this house is mine. It isn't. It's yours. It's theonly way, if you're to remain in the city. Is it good enough? Do youwant to stay as much as all that?"

The puzzled look came back. For a moment Joan was silent, worryingout the meaning of Martin's abrupt and rather cryptic words. Thereseemed to be a tremendous amount of fuss because she happened to bea girl.

Martin spoke again before she had emerged from the thicket of inwardquestions. She was only eighteen, after all.

"I mean, you can marry me if you like." he said, "and then no onecan take you back." He was amazed at his courage and hideouslyafraid that she would laugh at him. He had never dared to say howmuch he loved her.

She did laugh, but with a ring of so much pleasure and relief thatthe blood flew to his head. "Why, Marty, what a brain! Whatorganization! Of course I'll marry you. Why ever didn't we think ofthat last night?"

But before he could pull himself together a man-servant entered withan air of extreme surprise. "I didn't know you'd come home, sir," hesaid, "until I saw the suit-case." He saw Joan, and his eyesrounded.

"I was just going to ring," said Martin. "We want some breakfast.Will you see to it, please?" Alone again, Martin held out his handto Joan, in an odd, boyish way. And she took it, boyishly too."Thank you, Marty, dear," she said. "You've found the magic carpet.My troubles are over; and oh, what a pretty little bomb I shall havefor Grandmamma! And now let's explore my house. If it's all likethis, I shall simply love it!" And away she darted into the hall.

"And now," said Joan, "being duly married,--and you certainly domake things move when you start, Marty,--to send a telegram toGrandmother! Lead me to the nearest place."

Certain that every person in that crowded street saw in them a newlymarried couple, Martin tried to hide his joy under a mask of extremecallousness and universal indifference. With the challengingantagonism of an English husband,--whose national habit it isinvariably to stalk ahead of his women-kind while they scramblealong at his heels,--he led the way well in advance of hisunblushing bride. But his eyes were black with emotion. He sawrainbows all over the sky, and rings of bright light round thesquare heads of all the buildings which competed in an endeavor totouch the clouds; and there was a song in his heart.

They sat down side by side in a Western Union office, dallied for amoment or two with the tied pencils the points of which are alwaysblunt, and to the incessant longs and shorts of a dozen telegraphinstruments they put their epoch-making news on the neat blanks.Martin did not intend to be left out of it. His best pal was off themap, and so he chose a second-best friend and wrote triumphantly:"Have been married to-day. Staying in New York for honeymoon. Howare you?" He was sorry that he couldn't remember the addresses of ahundred other men. He felt in the mood to pelt the earth with suchtelegrams as that.

"Listen," said Joan, her eyes dancing with misj chief. "I think thisis a pretty good effort: 'Blessings and congratulations on hermarriage to-day may be sent to Mrs. Martin Gray, at 26 East Sixty-seventh Street, New York.--Joan.' How's that?"

It was the first time the boy had seen that name, and he blinked andsmiled and got very red. "Terse and literary," he said, dying to puthis arms round her and kiss her before all mankind. "They'll havesomething to talk about at dinner to-night. A nice whack in the eyefor Gleave."

He managed to achieve a supremely blase air while the words werebeing counted, but it crumbled instantly when the telegraphist shota quick look at Joan and gave Martin a grin of cordialcongratulation.

As soon as he saw a taxi, Martin hailed it and told the chauffeur todrive to the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. "We'llwalk from there," he said to Joan, "--if you'd like to, that is."

"I would like to. I want to peer into the shop windows and look athats and dresses. I've got absolutely nothing to wear. Marty, tellme, are we well off?"

Martin laughed. She reminded him of a youngster going for a picnicand pooling pocket money. "Yes," he said, "--quite."

She sat back with her hands crossed in her lap. "I'm so glad. Itsimplifies everything to have plenty to spend." But for herexquisite slightness and freshness, no one would have imagined thatshe was an only just-fledged bird, flying for the first time. Herequability and poise were those of a completely sophisticated woman.Nothing seemed to surprise her. Whatever happened was all part andparcel of the great adventure. Yesterday she was an overwatchedgirl, looking yearningly at a city that appeared to be unattainable.To-day she was a married woman who, a moment ago, had been standingbefore a minister, binding herself for good or ill to a man who wasdelightfully a boy and of whom she knew next to nothing. What did itmatter--what did anything matter--so long as she achieved her long-dreamed-of ambition to live and see life?

"Then I can go ahead," she added, "and dress as becomes the wife ofa man of one of our best families. I've never been able to dressbefore. Trust me to make an excellent beginning." There was atwinkle of humor in her eyes as she said these things, andexcitement too. "Tell me this, Marty: is it as easy to get unmarriedas it is to get married?"

"You're not thinking about that already, surely!"

"Oh, no. But information is always useful, isn't it?"

Just for a moment the boy's heart went down into his boots. Shedidn't love him yet; he knew that He intended to earn her love as anhonest man earns his living. What hurt was the note of flippancy inher voice in talking of an event that was to him so momentous andwonderful. It seemed to mean no more to her to have entered into alifelong tie than the buying of a mere hat--not so much, not nearlyso much, as to have found a way of not going back to those two oldpeople in the country. She was young, awfully young, he told himselfagain. Presently her feet would touch the earth, and she wouldunderstand.

As they walked up Fifth Avenue and with little gurgles of enthusiasmJoan halted at every other shop to look at hats that appealed toMartin as absurdly, willfully freakish, and evening dresses whichseemed deliberately to have been handed over to a cat to be torn toribbons, it came back to him that one just such soft spring evening,the year before, he had walked home from the Grand Central Stationand been seized suddenly with an almost painful longing to be askedby some precious person who belonged wholly to him to share herdelight in all the things which then stood for nothing in his life.Then and there he fulfilled an ambition long cherished and hiddenaway; he touched Joan on the arm and opened the elaborate door of afamous jeweler. He was known to the shop from the fact that he andhis father had always dealt there for wedding and Christmaspresents. He was welcomed by a man in the clothes of a concertsinger and with the bedside manner of a family doctor.

He was desperately self-conscious, and his collar felt two sizes toosmall, but he managed to get into his voice a tone that wassufficiently matter-of-fact to blunt the edge of the man's ratherroguish smile. "Let me see your latest gold-mesh bags," he said asordinary, everyday people ask to see collar studs.

"Marty!" whispered Joan. "What are you going to do?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Martin. "You can't get along without abag, you see."

Half a dozen yellow, insinuating things were laid out on the shiningglass, and with a wonderful smile that was worth all the gold theearth contained to Martin, Joan made a choice--but not hastily, andnot before she had inspected every other gold bag in the shop. Evenat eighteen she was woman enough to want to be quite certain thatshe possessed herself of the very best thing of its kind and wouldnever have, in future, to feel jealous of one that might liealluringly in the window.

"This one," she said finally. "I'm quite sure."

Martin didn't ask the price. It was for his bride. He picked it upand hung it over her wrist, said "The old address," nodded to theman,--who was just about to call attention to a tray of diamondbrooches,--and led the way out, feeling at least six feet two.

And as Joan regained the street, she passed another milestone in herlife. To be the proprietor of precisely just such a gold bag hadbeen one of her steady dreams.

"Marty," she said, "what a darling you are!"

The boy's eyes filled with tears.

VI

It was an evening Martin would never forget.

His suggestion that they should dine at Delmonico's and go to theEmpire to see Ethel Barrymore, accepted with avidity, had stirredJoan to immediate action. She had hailed a taxi, said, "You'll seeme in an hour, Marty," and disappeared with a quick injunction tohave whatever she bought sent home C.O.D.

It was actually two hours before he saw her again. He thanked hisstars that he had enough money in the bank to meet the checks thathe was required to make out in quick succession. Joan had not wastedtime, and as she got into the car to drive away from that sandwichhouse of excited servants, two other milestones had been leftbehind. She was in a real evening frock, and all the other thingsshe had bought were silk.

They drove straight home from the theater. Joan was tired. The dayhad been long and filled with amazements. She was out in the worldat last. Realization had exceeded expectation for the first time inhistory.

The sand-man had been busy with Martin's eyes too, but he led theway into the dining room with shoulders square and chin high andspring in his blood. This was home indeed.

"What a tempting little supper!" said Joan. "And just look at allthese flowers."

They were everywhere, lilacs and narcissi, daffodils, violets andhothouse roses. Hours ago he had sent out the almost unbelievingfootman for them. Joan and flowers--they were synonymous.

She put her pretty face into a great bowl of violets. "Youremembered all my little friends, Marty," she said.

They sat opposite each other at the long table. Martin's fatherlooked down at Martin's wife, and his mother at the boy from whomshe had been taken when his eager eyes came up to the level of herpillow. And there was much tenderness on both their faces.

Presently Joan gave a little laugh. "Please have something yourself.You're better than a footman. You're a butler."

His smile as he took his place would have lighted up a tunnel.

"I like Delmonico's," said Joan. "We'll often dine there. And theplay was perfectly splendid. What a lot of others there are to see!I don't think we'll let the grass grow under our feet, Marty. Andpresently we'll have some very proper little dinner parties in thisroom, won't we? Interesting, vital people, who must all be good-looking and young. It will be a long time before I shall want to seeanyone old again. Think what Alice Palgrave will say when she comesback! She'll underline every word if she can find any words. Shewasn't married till she was twenty."

And presently, having pecked at an admirable fruit salad, justsipped a glass of wine and made close-fitting plans that covered atleast a month, Joan rose. "I shall go up now, Marty," she said."It's twelve o'clock."

He watched her go upstairs with his heart in his throat. Surely thiswas all a dream, and in a moment he would find himself rudely andcoldly awake, standing in the middle of a crowded, lonely world? Butshe stopped on the landing, turned, smiled at him and waved herhand. He drew in a deep breath, went back into the dining room, puthis lips to the violets that had been touched by her face, andswitched off the lights. The scent of spring was in the air.

"Come in," she said, when presently, after a long pause, he knockedat her door.

She was sitting at a gleaming dressing table in something white andclinging, doing her hair that was so soft and brown and electrical.

He dared not trust himself to speak. He sat down on the edge of asofa at the foot of the bed and watched her.

She went on brushing but with her unoccupied hand gathered her gownabout her. "What is it, Marty?" she asked quietly.

She could see his young, eager face and broad shoulders in thelooking-glass. His hands were clasped tightly round one knee.

"I've been listening to the sound of traffic," she said. "That's thesort of music that appeals to me. It seems a year since I did myhair in that great, prim room and heard the owls cry and watchedmyself grow old. Just think! It's really only a few hours ago that Idropped my suit-case out of a window and climbed down the creeper.We said we'd make things move, didn't we?"

"I shall write to your grandfather in the morning," said Martin,with almost comical gravity and an unconscious touch of patronage.How childlike the old are to the very young!

"That will be nice of you," answered Joan. "We'll be very kind tohim, won't we? There'll be no one to read the papers to him now."

"He was a great chap once," said Martin. "My father liked himawfully."

She swung her hair free and turned her chair a little. "You musttell me what he said about him, in the morning. Heigh-ho, I'm sosleepy."

Martin got up and went to see if the windows were all open. "They'llcall us at eight," he said, "unless you'd like it to be later."

Joan went to the door and opened it and held out her hand. "Eight'sgood," she said. "Good night, Marty."

The boy looked at the little open hand with its long fingers, and athis wife, who seemed so cool and sweet and friendly. What did shemean?

He asked her, with an odd catch in his voice.

And she gave him the smile of a tired child. "Just that, old boy.Good night."

"But--but we're married," he said with a little stammer.

"Do you think I can forget that, in this room, with that sound inthe street?"

"Well, then, why say good night to me like this?"

"How else, Marty dear?"

An icy chill ran over Martin and struck at his heart. Was it reallytrue that she could stand there and hold out her hand and with thebeginning of impatience expect him to leave a room the right towhich had been made over to him by law and agreement?

He asked her that, as well as he could, in steadier, kinder wordsthan he need have used.

And she dropped her hand and sighed a little. "Don't spoileverything by arguing with me, Marty. I really am only a kid, youknow. Be good and run along now. Look--it's almost one."

The blood rushed to his head, and he held out his hands to her. "ButI love you. I love you, Joany. You can't--you CAN'T tell me to go."It was a boy's cry, a boy profoundly, terribly hurt and puzzled.

"Well, if we've got to go into all this now I may as well sit down,"she said, and did. "That air's rather chilly, too." She folded herarms over her breast.

It was enough. All the chivalry in Martin came up and choked hisanger and bitterness and untranslatable disappointment. He went outand shut the door and stumbled downstairs into the dark sitting roomand stood there for a long time all among chaos and ruin. He lovedher to adoration, and the spring was in his blood; and if she wasyoung, she was not so young as all that; and where was her side ofthe bargain? And at last, through the riot and jumble of histhoughts, her creed of life came back to him, word for word: shetook all she could get and gave nothing in return; and "Who cares?"was her motto.

And after that he stood like a man balanced on the edge of aprecipice. In cold blood he could go back and like a brute demandhis price. And if he went forward and let her off because he lovedher so and was a gentleman, down he must go, like a stone.

He was very white, and his lips were set when he went up to hisroom. With curious deliberation he got back into his clothes and sawthat he had money, returned to the hall, put on his coat and hat,shut the door behind him and walked out under the stars.

And up in her room, with her hand under her cheek like a child, Joanhad left the world with sleep.

PART TWO

THE ROUND-ABOUT

I

Alice Palgrave's partner had dealt, and having gone three in "notrumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lyingbefore her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. Soalso did Alice--for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money,and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. Therewere four bridge tables fully occupied in the charming drawing-room,and as she caught the hostess' eye and smiled, she felt just alittle bit like a fairy godmother in having surrounded Joan with somany of the smartest members of the younger set barely three weeksafter her astonishing arrival in a city in which she had only onefriend.

Alice didn't blind herself to the fact that in order to gamble, mostof the girls in the room would go, without the smallestdiscrimination, to anybody's house; but there were others,--notablyMrs. Alan Hosack, Mrs. Cooper Jekyll and Enid Ouchterlony,--whosepride it was to draw a hard, relentless line between themselves andevery one, however wealthy, who did not belong to families of thesame, or almost the same, unquestionable standing as their own.Their presence in the little house in East Sixty-seventh Street gaveit, they were well aware, a most enviable cachet and placed Joansafely within the inner circle of New York society--the democraticroyal inclosure. It was something to have achieved so soon--littleas Joan appeared, in her astonishing coolness, to appreciate it. TheLudlows, as Joan had told Alice with one of her frequent laughs,might have come over in the only staterooms on the ship which towedthe heavily laden Mayflower, but that didn't alter the fact that theHosacks, the Jekylls and the Ouchterlonys were the three mostconsistently exclusive and difficult families in the country, toknow whom all social climbers would joyously mortgage their chancesof eternity. Alice placed a feather in her cap accordingly.

Joan's table was the first to break up. She was a loser to the tuneof seventy dollars, and while she wrote her check to MarieLittlejohn, a tiny blond exotic not much older than herself,--wholaid down the law with the ripe authority of a Cabinet Minister andkept to a daily time-table with the unalterable effrontery of afashionable doctor,--talked over her shoulder to Christine Hurley.

"Alice tells me that your brother has gone to France with theCanadian Flying Corps. Aren't you proud of him?"

"I suppose so, but it isn't our war, and they're awfully annoyedabout it at Piping Rock. He was the crack man of the polo team, youknow. I don't see that there was any need of his butting into thisEuropean fracas."

"I quite agree with you," said Miss Littlejohn, with her eyes on theclock. "I broke my engagement to Metcalfe Hussey because he insistedon going over to join the English regiment his grandfather used tobelong to. I've no patience with sentimentality." She took the checkand screwed it into a small gold case. "I'm dining with my bandage-rolling aunt and going on to the opera. Thank goodness, the musicwill drown her war talk. Good-by." She nodded here and there andleft, to be driven home with her adipose chow in a Rolls-Royce.

Christine Hurley touched a photograph that stood on Joan's desk."Who's this good-looking person?" she asked.

"My husband," said Joan.

"Oh, really! When are we to see something of him?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Joan. "He's about somewhere."

Miss Hurley laughed. "It's like that already, is it? Haven't youonly just been married?"

"Yes," said Joan lightly, "but we've begun where most people leaveoff. It's a great saving of time and temper!"

The sophisticated Christine, no longer in the first flush of giddyyouth, still unmarried after four enterprising years, was surprisedinto looking with very real interest at the girl who had been untilthat moment merely a hostess. Her extreme finish, her unself-conscious confidence and intrepidity, her unassumed lightness oftemper were not often found in one so young and apparently virginal.She dismissed as unbelievable the story that this girl had beenbrought up in the country in an atmosphere of early Victorianism.She had obviously just come from one of those elaborate finishingschools in which the daughters of rich people are turned intohothouse plants by sycophants and parasites and sent out into theworld the most perfect specimens of superautocracy, to patronizetheir parents, scoff at discipline, ignore duty and demand the sortof luxury that brought Rome to its fall. With admiration andamusement she watched her say good-by to one woman after another asthe various tables broke up. It really gave her quite a moment tosee the way in which Joan gave as careless and unawed a hand to Mrs.Alan Hosack and Mrs. Cooper Jekyll as to the Countess Palotta, whohad nothing but pride to rattle in her little bag; and when finallyshe too drove away, it was with the uneasy sense of dissatisfactionthat goes with the dramatic critic from a production in which he hashonestly to confess that there is something new--and arresting.

Alice Palgrave stayed behind. She felt a natural proprietaryinterest in the success of the afternoon. "My dear," she saidemotionally, "you're perfectly wonderful!"

"I am? Why?"

"To any other just-married girl this would have been an ordeal, anerve-wrecking event. But you've been as cool as a fish--I've beenwatching you. You might have been brought up in a vice-regal lodgeand hobnobbed all your life with ambassadors. How do you do it?"

Joan laughed and threw out her arms. "Oh, I don't know," she said,with her eyes dancing and her nostrils extended. "I don't stop tothink how to do things. I just do them. These people are young andalive, and it's good to be among them. I work off some of my ownvitality on them and get recharged at the sound of their chatter.People, people--give me people and the clash of tongues and thesense of movement. I don't much care who they are. I shall pick upall the little snobbish stuff sooner or later, of course, and talkabout the right set and all that, as you do. I'm bound to. Atpresent everything's new and exciting, and I'm whipping it up. Youwait a little. I'll cut out some of the dull and pompous when I'vegot things going, and limit myself to red-blooded speed-breakers.Give me time, Alice."

She sat down at the piano and crashed out a fox-trot that was allover town. No one would have imagined from her freshness andvivacity that she had been dancing until daylight every night thatweek.

"Well," said Alice when she could be heard, "I see you makinghistory, my dear; there's no doubt about that."

"Not I, my dear. I left care away back in the country with my littleold frocks."

Alice held out her hand. "You bewilder me a little," she said. "Youmake me feel as if I were in a high wind. You did when we were atschool, I remember. Well, don't bother to thank me for having got upthis party." She added this a little dryly.

With a most winning smile Joan kissed her. "You're a good pal,Alice," she said, "and I'm very grateful."

Alice was compensated, although her shrewd knowledge of charactertold her how easily her friend won her points. "And I hope you'reduly grateful to Martin Gray?"

"To dear old Marty? Rather! He and I are great pals."

But that was all Alice got. Her burning curiosity to know preciselyhow this young couple stood must go unsatisfied for the time being.She had only caught a few fleeting glimpses of the man who had givenJoan the key to life, and every time had wondered, from something inhis eyes, whether he found things wholly good. She was just a littlesuspicious of romances. Her own had worn thin so quickly. "Good-by,my dear," she said. "Don't forget you're dining with me to-morrow."

"Not likely."

"What are you doing to-night?"

"Going to bed at nine o'clock to sleep the clock round. I'm awfullytired."

She stood quite still for many minutes after Alice had gone, andshut her eyes. In a quick series of moving pictures she sawthousands of little lights and swaying people and clashing colors,and caught snatches of lilting music and laughter. She was tired,and something that seemed like a hand pressed her forehead tightly,but the near-by sound of incessant traffic sent her blood spinning,and she opened her eyes and gave a little laugh and went out.

Martin was on his way downstairs. He drew up abruptly. "Oh, hello!"he said.

"Oh, hello!" said Joan.

He was in evening clothes. His face had lost its tan and his eyestheir clear country early-to-bed look. "You've had a tea-fight, Isee. I peered into the drawing-room an hour ago and backed out,quick."

"Why? They were all consumed with curiosity about you. Alice hasadvertised our romantic story, you see." She clasped her handstogether and adopted a pose in caricature of the play heroine in anecstasy of egomania.

But Martin's laugh was short and hollow. He wasn't amused. "How didyou get on?" he asked.

"Lost seventy dollars--that's all. Three-handed bridge withGrandfather and Grandmother was not a good apprenticeship. I musthave a few lessons. D'you like my frock? Come up. You can't see itfrom there."

And he came up and looked at her as she turned this way and that.How slim she was, and alluring! The fire in him flamed up, and hiseyes flickered. "Awful nice!" he said.

"You really like it?"

"Yes, really. You look beyond criticism in anything, always."

Joan stretched out her hand. "Thank you, Marty," she said. "You sayand do the most charming things that have ever been said and done."

He bent over the long-fingered hand. His pride begged him not to lether see the hunger and pain that were in his eyes.

"Going out?" she asked.

Martin gave a careless glance at one of B. C. Koekkoek's inimitableDutch interiors that hung between two pieces of Flemish tapestry.His voice showed some of his eagerness, though. "I was going to havedinner with some men at the University Club, but I can chuck thatand take you to the Biltmore or somewhere else if you like."

"Aren't you going to give me one evening, then?" His question wasapparently as casual as his attitude. He stood with his hands in hispockets and his legs wide apart and his teeth showing. He might havebeen talking to a sister.

"Oh, lots, presently. I'm so tired to-night, old boy."

He would have given Parnassus for a different answer. "All rightthen," he said. "So long."

"So long, Marty! Don't be too late." She nodded and smiled and wentupstairs.

And he nodded and smiled and went down--to the mental depths. "Whatam I to do?" he asked himself. "What am I to do?" And he put hisarms into the coat that was held out and took his hat. In the streetthe soft April light was fading, and the scent of spring was blownto him from the Park. He turned into Fifth Avenue in company with ahorde of questions that he couldn't shake off. He couldn't believethat any of all this was true. Was there no one in all this world ofpeople who would help him and give him a few words of advice? "Oh,Father," he said from the bottom of his heart, "dear old Father,where are you?"

The telephone bell was ringing as Joan went into her room. GilbertPalgrave spoke--lightly and fluently and with easy words offlattery.

She laughed and sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs andput the instrument on her knee. "You read all that in a book," shesaid. "I'm tired. Yesterday and the night before. . .No. . .No. ..All right, then. Fetch me in an hour." She put the receiver back.

"Why not?" she said to herself, ringing for her maid. "Bed's for oldpeople. Thank God, I sha'n't be old for a century."

She presented her back to the deft-fingered girl and yawned. But thenear-by clatter of traffic sounded in her ears.

II

Gilbert Palgrave turned back to his dressing table. An hour gave himample time to get ready.

The small, eel-like Japanese murmured sibilantly and disappearedinto the bathroom.

This virginal girl, who imagined herself able to play with firewithout burning her fingers, was providing him with most welcomeamusement. And he needed it. He had been considerably bored of late--always a dangerous mood for him to fall into. He was thirty-one.For ten years he had paid far more than there had been any necessityto keep constantly amused, constantly interested. Thanks to a shrewdancestor who had bought large tracts of land in a part of Manhattanwhich had then been untouched by bricks and mortar, and to others,equally shrewd, who had held on and watched a city spreading up theIsland like a mustard plant, he could afford whatever price he wasasked to pay. Whole blocks were his where once the sheep had grazed.

Ingenuity to spend his income was required of Palgrave. He possessedthat gift to an expert degree. But he was no easy mark, no meredegenerate who hacked off great chunks of a splendid fortune for thesake of violent exercise. He was too indolent for violence, tooinherently fastidious for degeneracy. And deep down somewhere in anature that had had no incentive to develop, there was the fag endof that family shrewdness which had made the early Palgraves enviedand maligned. Tall and well built, with a handsome Anglo-Saxon typeof face, small, soft, fair mustache, large, rather bovine gray eyes,and a deep cleft in his chin, he gave at first sight an impression